No Substitute for a Tripod

The older I get the more I want to just hand hold everything. With image stabilization, you generally can hand hold scenics, even with exposure bracketing for HDR processing. With closeups, though, there really is no substitute for a stable tripod.

Image stabilization will not compensate for camera movement affecting the plane of focus, which is pretty thin close up. I've been trying to sell my crop sensor 60mm macro lens without any success so I decided to try it out this morning with the 7D Mark II (the only camera I have it will fit) on the first blooms of the season, Blue-eyed Grass.

At f/8 and 1/750th of a second, the image should be fairly sharp. It is, but the thin line of focus is missed as I hand hold the camera. This is cropped and if you click on the image twice you will see it at 100%.

About 20 minutes later I decided to do it right and grabbed my travel tripod and remote release. It's a much better result. Here is an only slightly cropped full image along with a couple of 100% crops showing the detail.